


The Sundered Lands

by Tammany



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Multi, Other, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't know who's going to spot this--most of my work is in Sherlock fandom, with some detours into a few other fandoms. But this is an original piece, and I'm posting because really, I have to start writing my own stuff, not just fic. I do, I do, I do.</p><p>So, this is an original work, first chapter, taking place in an alternate universe with multiple worlds, parallel worlds, alternate planes, heavens, hells, mythic beings--and worlds that are almost exactly like this one, only they are linked to all the others. </p><p>If you want to see some of the visuals I'm using for inspiration, you can go here: <br/>http://www.pinterest.com/pegeel/faces-for-novel/<br/>and here:<br/>http://www.pinterest.com/pegeel/world-for-novel/<br/>and here: <br/>http://www.pinterest.com/pegeel/the-lands-of-novel/</p><p>I'd love feedback. I work so much better when I know someone's watching and following along. I hope you like it.</p><p>If you want some idea what it's "like," I would say start with roughly Zelazny's Amber universe, with a dose of something lush tossed in for good measure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sundered Lands

Argent ran into Blaise in a little tea shop off the main cavern of Sun’s city, up on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. It wasn’t a surprise. Sun’s was popular with very nearly everyone. It didn’t matter if you were walker or watcher or warrior; magus or messenger or maestre. It was a safe place. Sun insisted on strict neutrality, and had the power and authority to make it stick. Not everyone could boast of having faced down Heaven even once and gotten away with it, but the Horsemaster could. It was said that he could be bested—but few wanted to put it to the test, here in his own kingdom, surrounded by those who loved him.

The tea shop was comfortable and grubby, and probably would not have been allowed to open on any of a number of worlds. There was unsavory grit on the floor and little raised dunes around the edges and in the corners. The furniture, such as it was, didn’t match. There was a big round table of oak surrounded by sturdy oak chairs that looked like the sort of thing institutions would purchase: practical, sensible, solid, easily maintained and repaired. There was a low teak table barely shin-high surrounded by worn cushions. A cluster of lounging chairs and chaises formed a loose ring. There was almost always someone in the place—sometimes alone, sometimes in company, always enjoying themselves over an array of choices that spanned worlds. Argent had come in alone, and had meant to stay alone. Only when he saw Blaise curled, like a winter fox, by a brass brazier, holding a handle-less cup in his mitted hands did he change his mind, and then with a sense of bittersweet resignation.

How could he not spend one more hour with Blaise, after all, in  this safe place? He raised his hand, catching his old friend’s eye, and smiled. Blaise smiled back and waved back with one hand. The half-fingered old black mitt looked like a fox’s foot, in the shadows. Everything about Blaise was foxy, from his amber-brown eyes to his russet hair tied back in a tail.

“May I join you?” Argent asked, coming across the room. His big boots tromped heavily on the floorboards.

“Always.”

Argent bent carefully, easing himself down and down. Unlike Blaise, he was a tall man—lean and lanky with knobby, articulated joints. His code name in the Rising Sun engagements had been “Mantis.” Enough enemy operatives had guessed his identity that from then on he’d refused any cover name that could be associated with him so easily. Not that it mattered here.

“Blaise,” he said, as he hauled fat cushions and duvets around his gawky frame. “Long time.”

“Oh, merely a forever or two,” Blaise said. His eyes sparkled. He’d always had a look as much of the middle lands and the mystery as of heaven or hell: a kind nixy-faced peculiarity that only enhanced his beauty. _Jolie laide._ Blaise was beautifully ugly. He studied his old friend, and said, “You look considerably worse for the wear. When are you going to come in from the cold, my dear? Ah—before you answer, think, and in the meantime, tell me what you’d like.”

Argent considered. “It’s winter where I was last. Wet. Cold. And I haven’t had Xiàjì mǔdān in ages. A pot, made Angelischer-style, and dim sum? I’ll cover our costs.”

“Is that an invitation to join the feast? I thought I was hosting. I was here first, after all.”

“Aye, but I owe you.”

The silence fell, letting the statement sing between them like the high tone of a prayer bowl. Then Blaise shrugged and smiled. “I’ll be eating out on that debt forever, won’t I?”

“I wouldn’t have forever if it weren’t for you,” Argent pointed out. “And it’s not like I see you so often I can’t afford to be generous.”

“In that case…” Blaise said, laughing, and gestured over the little macaque waitress.  He proceeded to order all sorts of luxuries—dragon shrimp tempura and fresh round balls of sea urchins with their quills intact and the bottom knocked open so you could scoop up the rich orange roe with a tiny porcelain spoon. He didn’t neglect the simpler fare, though, knowing his friend’s tastes. Soon the table was covered with gleaming hand-painted plates brimming over with fatty, moist pork dumplings and little bowls of braised duck ready to be served on steamed Indian appam.

“I’ll pour,” Blaise said, with a smile, and took charge of the fat brown tea pot and the deep mug that had been brought on request. He poured in, and asked, “Milk, sugar, lemon? Or anything?”

Argent had learned to drink his tea however it could be had—and any number of other hot drinks as well. But this was turning into a tiny little oasis of luxury. He smiled. “Sugar and lemon.”

“Just like in the old days,” Blaise said. He closed his eyes, and the soft lamplight glittered on his lashes. “I remember you wrapped in that old quilted coverlet, fussing as you squeeze in ‘enough and no more.’”

Argent could remember it to. It had been long, long ago. He seldom allowed himself to think of it any more. Millennia had passed, and more were still to come, but those old days would never return.

He held the mug cradled in his big palms. The heat seeped into his heavy knuckles and eased its way through heavy calluses build up by an eternity of weapons practice. He drank deep, enjoying the almost too-hot tea scald its way down his throat. He sighed in heavy pleasure. “Good,” he said. “So good.”

Blaise said nothing, but nudged the plate of fatty pork dumplings across the table to him, followed by the shallow bowl of soy and vinegar dipping sauce. For himself he chose a single dragon shrimp, lost in a cloud of brittle, tattered batter, a bowl of hot, sweet dipping sauce, and a little plate of golden needles and seitan. He poured more of his own tea out into his little cup, then held it high, long nose hovering to catch the perfume of the tea.

“Local leaf?” Argent asked.

“Mmmm.” Blaise drank it, and smiled, before applying his attention to the dishes he’d selected. “They do lovely things here, for a pittance. A song.”

“And will they thank me if I offer to pay with a song?”

Blaise gave a sharp bark. “With your voice? Chase us out and never let us back in, more like. Bronze coin or silver are more welcome.”

For a while they were both silent, eating and drinking and enjoying the rare pleasure of shared companionship from the days before history began—before the schisms and the wars and the sundering. Blaise was dressed as a local courtier—three layers of carefully selected robes, starting with one so sheer you could read a hand-painted scroll at twilight in a yellow so pale it was like snow dreaming of daffodils, ending with a heavy, supple robe of twill silk in persimmon brown, embroidered with only a few small, but perfect golden aspen leaves chasing along the hem and the deep sleeves. At his belt he wore a purse anchored to his sash with a fancy decorative bead, and cinched tight with another. Beside was a folded fan, and the lacquered sheath of a short-sword—the kind permitted the highest rank of court artists in the collection of worlds that spiraled out from Sun’s territory.

Argent was from the lands most commonly called “The Western Hegemony.” He wore narrow trousers of durable black twill cotton, tall lace-up boots with crepe soles, with solid titanium armor plate attached, protecting his shins and feet. He wore a knit black sweater with a shawl collar closed with gleaming enameled buttons. A high-necked jersey covered his neck to his chin, in deep grey that showed off his enameled torc to good effect. He wore a massive Bowie knife at his belt, and his forearms were protected with enameled bracers. His small shield hung at his back, and his coat and pack lay where he’d dropped them when he sat.

“Try the dumplings,” he said, pushing them toward Blaise. “They’re good.”

“Too fattening,” Blaise said, making a face that made his sharp, foxy nose seem foxier than ever. “I have to watch my weight.”

“Because no one will love you otherwise?” Argent felt sorry as soon as he said it. Blaise had always hungered for a security in love that love itself could not supply. The hounds of his own fears chased him, yipping over every bite, every clothing choice, every lyric he sang in the halls of the great. “Come on,” he said more gently. “What’s a couple of dumplings between friends?”

Blaise smiled tightly—but gave in. He leaned his rusty head over the table, close enough Argent could feel the warmth of his breath and smell the clean scent of his soaps and unguents. Blaise picked up a dumpling with delicate, precise movements, like a heron snatching a fish from a stream, and then dunked the dumpling in the sauce. He brought it up, tapped it lightly on the edge of the bowl, then moved it to his mouth, his free hand drifting along beneath to protect his robes from drips. He munched, and moaned softly.

“So good,” he said. “So good.”

“Treat yourself more often,” Argent said, fondly. “You’re pretty enough already—and you’ll be prettier if you keep moaning and smiling like that.”

Blaise flashed him a smile in return, bright as sunshine. “You’re a flirt, Argent.”

Argent wasn’t. He was slow and steady and people liked him, but he wasn’t a flirt—Blaise was the flirt. But he smiled in spite of it. Blaise had always had a knack for making him feel good about himself.

“What’s brought you to Sun’s domain?” Blaise asked, as he considered a tiny bowl of honeyed curd. “One of the high and mighty in Third Heaven sending messages to Himself?”

Argent shook his head. “Haven’t had much to do with the heavens since the sunderings. Once in a while, yes. Mostly, no. I’m running a message from one of the twilight land lordlings to the lady of peace, and he wants me to go by way of Sun. She’s got a sweet spot for the scamp, and he thinks it may ease the message if I have Sun’s good will behind me.”

Blaise sucked honey off the porcelain spoon and pondered. “Trouble brewing?”

“When isn’t it?”

“There is that.” Blaise looked weary. “Everything is so much harder than it used to be. What sort of message—or do they kill you if you leak?”

“This time I’m supposed to leak, if it will get me good information. The lords of the gray lands are looking for more changelings. You know how it goes. The old lines—the old bloods. They’re hoping Herself can point them at a few orphanages or outstanding charity cases that might suit their needs.”

“That old game,” Blaise said. “Forever and ever, world without end. The changelings. As if it ever did any good.”

Argent didn’t comment. His own opinion was that the faction with the most old-line blood fared best from encounter to encounter, and rose highest between encounters, but he knew there were many who felt otherwise…and had their own preferred data to point to when they argued their own side of the debate. Blaise had always hovered in between before. Apparently the last centuries had changed his viewpoint. So Argent just grunted, and ate dumplings, before murmuring, “It’s a living,” and letting it pass. When night fell they switched from tea to plum brandy. When Argent could keep his head up no longer, Blaise invited the messenger back to his rooms.

They walked the polished marble corridors of the caverns, surrounded by the heavy rumble of the falls and the chatter of a city that lived from sunrise to sunrise, never stopping. The monkey-kinder raced laughing and playing, climbing the spiral columns and squatting on the stalagmites watching the foot traffic go by. The hundreds of outsiders who came to enjoy Sun’s secure haven went here and there.

“So strange,” Argent said, dead drunk and clinging to Blaise’s hand for fear of losing himself in the mists of plum brandy. “So strange.”

“What’s strange?”

“Everything,” Argent said. “We thought our wars would end all war. We thought the sundering would shatter the world. All it did was make everything smaller.”

“No,” Blaise said, softly, leading his old friend into his dim, quiet sitting room, scented with sandalwood and cedar. “No. It made us look more closely. That’s a different thing altogether.”

“Pfffft,” Argent said, and enveloped Blaise in his arms. “Pffft. The grandeur is gone. It’s all petty little mortal lives and tricked up faelings trading in changling brats, now.” He looked soberly into those beloved fox-gold eyes. “Remember the charge of the Host?” he asked, blearily. “Remember the trumpets and the wings?”

“I remember we fought on opposite sides,” Blaise said, sadly. “I remember only the mortals won.” And he kissed his old friend, and helped him out of his strange, armored clothing, and tucked him into his own bed, knowing when the morning came they’d have lain chaste the whole night long, no matter what they both remembered.

oOo

When Clarion Myles pushed into Dot’s, shaking March rain from his jacket and his soldier-cropped hair, he saw the back booth was crammed with a pack of Feverro’s hangers-on. Nobody big or important, just the standard back-kitchen rabble who trailed after their betters, but it was enough to make Myles cautious. He slipped out of the waterproofed jacket, grabbing a seat at the counter, and jerked his chin up, catching the attention of the new girl.

“Cuppa joe,” he said. “Bowl of chowda, couple-a clam cakes.”

“White or clear chowder?” the girl asked, her voice announcing she wasn’t a local…at least, not by birth.

“White,” he said. He wasn’t local either, and while the clear broth chowder was good, it wasn’t chowder to him, and it never seemed to blanket his insides and wrap him in comfort the way white chowder did. He hitched his ass up on the spinning stool and leaned his elbows on the countertop. “You new?”

She nodded, called his order back through the hatch, then moved smoothly into the task of pouring his coffee. “Yeah. My second week.” She was round as a cherry and bosomy, with hot pink hair and a cautious smile trying not to look cautious. She slipped the coffee cup onto the counter in front of him. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Sugar,” he said, and caught the dispenser as she slid it down the formica. “Got a name?”

“Nora,” she said, without inviting him to ask a whole lot more.

He didn’t mind. It kept things easy. He glanced down the room, evaluating everyone.

The majority were just locals—what you’d expect in a joint like Dot’s. Two older women dressed in mail-order chic, with fluffy hair bleached and dyed soft pastel ghosts of their original hair color—one a sort of powdery auburn and the other a hesitant blonde. Three plumbers—apparently a team, in city uniforms, wolfing down burgers and fries. Several tables were filled with college students, though which colleges Clarion wasn’t going to attempt to guess: there were enough in town to make the question complicated, and Clarion had enough complications in his life without getting involved in more. It was important to be able to pick out Feverro’s gang. Identifying the difference between a Brown student, a Johnson and Wales student, or any of a number of other options mattered a whole lot less.

Feverro’s gang, though… yeah.

Pookie sat at the back of the round booth, arms stretched across the backs of the padded vinyl seats. Pookie was a scrawny, wizened, sharp-eyed sort, all chin and eyes and pointy bits, with a mean grin and a constant hint of being more dangerous than he let on. He was surrounded by the usual lot—Pansy and Daisy and Fern, all on the make and on the take. Snapper Rivers and Tommy the Bat and Skeevy Breakers, from down on the docks. Brawdie Leckison picked at his nails with a pocket knife big enough to gut a white-tail buck. They all watched Clarion, narrow-eyed, aware that none of his own were with him, but equally aware that Feverro wouldn’t be pleased if they broke the peace. Not here, of all places. Not at Dot’s.

Dot’s was neutral ground. Anyone could go to Dot’s for a cuppa java, a bowl-a chowda, a couple-a stuffies. Drink a chocolate cabinet—the local term for a shake. You could walk in the front door from one Providence, and go back out into another on a different plain of the sundering, and no one would give you trouble, because no one—no one in all the worlds—dared block a cross-point.

Clarion gave a cold, dispassionate nod to Pookie. Pookie nodded back, not one bit warmer or more welcoming. He gave Fern a look, and the girl shimmied out of the booth and crossed over to join Clarion.

“Pooks says to let you know there’s business going down three sunder-crossings down,” she said. “On Wisdom Street.”

“And he’s telling me why?” Clarion sucked down coffee, refusing to look into her enchanting face. He knew what he’d see—all Feverro’s girls had it to a degree: a soft-eyed, verdant green, moss-tender wildness that made a man ache. A flicker of lashes trapping sunlight even here, under the jittering fluorescent lights. A turn of the lip that could raise the prick of a dead man, much less a man’s living flesh.

She shrugged—whether at his avoidance of her glance or his question was uncertain. “Don’ ask me, herm. Not my pay grade, y’know? Just steer clear of Wisdom, if you know what’s good for you.”

“And if I bring backup?”

She shrugged again. “Pook says Feverro’s keeping well back. Old Nick’s in action and we’re better off out of it.”

“My bosses may not agree.”

She shook her head. He could have sworn he heard aspen leaves whispering as her hair tossed. “Nah. Ange will stay out, too. Not worth the blood. Small change, and no one wants a fight.”

She was likely right, he thought. Ange’s gang was no more interested in outright war than anyone else, and particularly not in the bland, undifferentiated neutral lands, where no faction ruled. The worst any of the gang bosses would tolerate was a rumble in an alley, a knife-fight in a low-class bar.

He nodded. “Tell Pookie I’ll pass the word. Angie’s going to want a man on point, just to see what goes down.”

She sighed. “Your ass if they catch you, baby-cakes.”

“You sure you got no idea what’s brewing?”

She slid back off her stool, and turned to head back. Then she paused, and leaned over, pretending to drop a light kiss high on his cheek. As she did, she whispered, “They say there’s a blood. Nick’s looking for changers.” Then she was gone, sashaying across the old diner to the sound of admiring whoops and laughter and small-time hoods making kissy noises.

Clarion shivered. A blood? A change-hunt?

He gulped down his cup of joe, slurped the last of his chowder, and hurried away, leaving his clam cakes uneaten. No matter what Fern thought, if there was old blood to be found, or a change raid threatening, Ange would want to know—and he’d want to know yesterday, if not sooner.

 

oOo

 

Izzy Bowen was late getting to Temple class. He was often late—his stop on the school bus was near the end of the run, and he had a bad habit of poking into the bodega on the corner of Wealth to buy a box of saladitos—salted plums—to suck on during schola.

It was the one time he dared risk it—Papa was determined Izzy stick to the straight and narrow, and for Papa anything that wasn’t Temple or Testament was questionable. Even schola was subject to close scrutiny. Papa had wanted the parish to hire an Academe boy from one of the seminaries up Boston-way, but none had wanted to do it in Papa’s terms or for Papa’s offered salary. They’d ended up hiring Schoolmaster Crane, instead, because he was born and raised of the Travelers and knew the old language from the cradle and followed the first way, if not the second. As Papa put it, Schoolmaster Crane might not lead the boys of the Wisdom Street Temple to salvation, but he wouldn’t lead them to spiritual defilement, either—and at the very least by the time they left the schola they’d know the scriptural tongue and understand the ways of the first law.

There was a mob of hermanos crowded around the counter at the bodega when Izzy darted in. He had to writhe past long legs to reach the candy racks, then think carefully when he found only one pack of saladitos. After careful consideration he decided on lemon balls as a backup, then had to wait patiently while the men spoke fast Spanish over his head about something intense and dramatic. By the time he’d paid for his guilty indulgence the bell up at Blessed Sacrament was ringing the four o’clock hymn, and he had to run fast up the walk. He turned sharply onto Wisdom, raced past his own house where he lived alone with Papa, and kept on till he reached the three-family Schoolmaster Crane lived in. He thundered up the stairs to the second story and slipped silently through the door, inching his way into the sitting room to find a place at the long table under the side window.

“’ _Eivat_.,” Schoolmaster Crane said, even as he nodded soberly at Izzy and gave him a scolding, if amused look. “ _Eivat_. Anyone know what it means?”

“Masculine form of ‘first,’ said Megalany Hern, quick and certain. She was the only girl in the room, and didn’t rightly belong, but the Temple only paid half of Schoolmaster Crane’s rent, and he made up the difference by letting Megalany join the boys. The parish was aghast, but Papa had approved it in the end. They’d had to fight so hard to find anyone to run the schola at all, and Papa had so many other things he preferred to spend money on. And it wasn’t like the Herns were members of the Temple. They weren’t even just uncalled, they were outcaste. As Papa said, “Schola would ruin a good Temple girl, unfitting her for her married life, but exposure to the language and the first law can only be an improvement for a little altar-thief.”

As far as Izzy was concerned it was a mistake. Megalany was younger than any of the boys but him, but she had no sense of decorum or restraint. She was a showoff, a blatant braggart, vain, full of herself—and too smart for her own good. Not to mention making all the rest of them look bad.

“Yes, Megalany,” Schoolmaster Crane said, fighting down an amused smile. “You’re quite right.”

“I know, sir,” Megalany said, sitting straight up with her head high. “The female form is just _eiva_.” Then she squalled, and a quick tussle transpired between her and her neighbor, Ave Sounders, leaving Izzy with the firm convinction Ave had given Megalany just the kick in the shins she’d asked for. She pinched back, though, and growled “ _Eiva._ First of the first and mother.”

“Sunder-bitch,” Ave growled back. “Eiva was the sunder-bitch herself…and you’re a sunder-bitch too, you little heathen.”

Thwack! The long, solid oak pointer Schoolmaster Crane used when teaching slapped down hard on the table surface, adding another shallow dent to the many already there. “Silence, both of you,” he grumbled. He looked around for a distraction, and his eyes locked on Izzy.

Izzy sank low in his chair. He’d only just finished working the cardboard flaps of his saladitos open in his pocket, and slipped on sour-salty dried plum-pebble into his mouth. His eyes begged, “Not me, not me, not me!”

Schoolmaster Crane looked down his long nose in good natured amusement. One question-mark wave had worked down from the last remaining outpost of his forelock, a valiant survivor of the steady retreat of his hairline. He smiled. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you, boy. This won’t be that hard.”

Izzy tucked the plum between his teeth and his cheek, and nodded.

“What are the classifications of reality?”

Izzy knew that one. His Papa had been drilling this into him since before Izzy could properly remember. “Seven heavens, three hells, limbo, penance, and then all the sundered lands.”

“No others?”

Izzy paused, then frowned. This was a trick question, of a sort. “Temple says that’s all,” he said, stoutly, “But your people say there’s nine-time-nine heavens, nine hells, and twenty-seven twilight worlds—and then the middle lands, that we Templers call the sundered.”

“And the uncounted,” Megalany cut in, firmly. “Can’t leave out the uncounted.”

Schoolmaster Crane frowned at her. “Neither the Temple nor Travelers believe in the uncounted, Miss Hern,” he said, firmly.

“Travelers do,” she shot back. “The changers, anyway. You can’t travel the change lanes if you don’t know about the uncounted.”

“That’s superstition,” Schoolmaster Crane said. His normally friendly face was stern. “The Travelers don’t travel the sundered lands in any case. We’re called Travelers because we’re like the Tinkers and Rom—we’re road people. That’s all.”

“So why don’t you live in a wagon?” asked Moss Harper. “With a black and white pony and a round roof?”

“Because I live here and teach you,” Schoolmaster Crane said, as though that settled the question. “Now, if you’d turn to page ten of our text books, we can start reading the story of Strong Sampson and the She-Barber.”

Izzy pulled out his book and leaned over it, struggling with the squiggly script with its odd marks indicating too many fussy things—one mark to show possessive, another to show tense, another to indicate whether a word was to be read in the High Language or the Low Language. Schola was hard and the Tongue was harder still.

Megalany wriggled and squirmed. “Boring,” she grumbled.

“Miss Hern?” Schoolmaster’s voice was a warning, not an actual question. Megalany sighed.

Izzy risked a look across the table at her. She was tiny and birdlike and dark, with a mass of wild near-black curls and snapping bright blue eyes and the most delicate, dainty bee-stung lips. She was no more than eight, but she glowed. No—she burned, he thought. Like noonday sun in the middle of summer, or the house that had gone up in flame two streets over that past winter.

When school was done she followed him down the stairs, then grabbed the sleeve of his sweater between her fingers as the other boys trundled across her mother’s ground-floor porch, down the stairs, and away down the street.

“There’s a boggle watching us,” she said, eyes huge and thrilled. “He’s been watching the street all day!”

“How do you know,” Izzy asked, unable to resist, though he knew perfectly well that boggles were little-kid stuff—things parents talked about to make babies behave. “You were at school like me. I saw you in the cafeteria playing jacks with Jenny Venetti.”

“My mum told me,” she said, still wide-eyed. “He’s right over there.” She angled her body to hide her gesture, then pointed obliquely. “By the barberry hedge. No. Don’t look. Just—stay on this side of the street when you go home, right up until you reach your da’s house, right?”

“It’s stupid,” Izzy said. “There’s no such thing as boggles.”

Megalany sniffed. “There is so boggles, you stupid boy. Boggles and jack-a-reekies and pooks and piskeys and bloody-hats and barn skegs and more.”

Izzy hunched down in his sweater, and hiked his knapsack over his shoulder. “You’re weird,” he said.

Megalany glowered. “You’re dumb.”

“Yeah, well…” Izzy wasn’t sure what to say next that wouldn’t get him into a world of grief. In the end he just started down the stair, passing Megalany as though she wasn’t there. “Yeah. Well. Anyway. See you tomorrow.”

She huffed, then said, “Remember. This side of the street until you get to your da’s. Don’t cross before.”

He wanted to ignore the instruction—but his spine prickled and tickled when he thought about it, and instead he kept to the north side of Wisdom. As he walked past the Armitage place he risked a glance across the way at their barberry hedge.

Something was there. Or not…a dark shadow. Something that moved. Eyes?

He felt his heart trip faster, his blood rush. He looked away, and marched on.

It was dim. Spring hadn’t properly settled in yet, and the sun still set early. It was easy to imagine things.

He ran the last three yards to his own walk, pounded up the stairs to the door, and raced in, panting.

The smell of tinned baked beans, frozen corn, and hamburgers frying on the skillet filled him with comfort and a sense of security. He was home. Safe.

“How was schola,” Papa asked, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. He was a big man, with a big head and a neat, bristling beard. “Are you studying well?”

“Yes, Papa,” Izzy said. “Megalany’s a pain in the—“

“Manners,” Papa said.

“Well, she’s a pain, anyway,” Izzy said. “She’s such a know-it-all.”

“Shame on you, then,” Papa grumbled. “A sad day when an eight-year-old outcaste can beat schola boys at the Knowledge.”

Izzy didn’t answer. He just sighed.

Papa smiled. “Ah, you’ll come into your own and leave her far behind,” he said. “A Temple boy comes of age later than many, but when he does he is a man to reckon with. Wash your hands, boy, and get ready for dinner. The burgers are almost done.”

Izzy nodded.

After grace, as he squeezed ketchup onto his burger bun, he said, “Seven words, three hells, limbo, penance, and the sundered lands. That’s all, right?”

Papa nodded. “That’s all.”

“Why do the Travelers say more—and Megalany’s people say more still?”

Papa shrugged. “Heresy,” he said, as though that were an answer.

Izzy nodded. It was an answer he was accustomed to. After a bite of burger, he said, “There’s no such thing as boggles, right?”

“Right,” said Papa, then, sharply, “Why are you wasting your time on this, boy?”

“Just wondering,” Izzy said, then spent the rest of dinner talking about the Temple youth dinner, because Papa liked him to take an interest in Temple activities.

That night, though, he lay on his stomach and looked sideways out the window overlooking the street, and shivered, unsure if he saw movement behind shrubs, around trash cans, lurking behind cars…and when he woke the following morning, the sense of uneasiness hadn’t left.


End file.
